1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging system, imaging apparatus, control method thereof, and storage medium and, more particularly, to an imaging system for generating image data, an imaging apparatus, a control method thereof, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when image data captured by an imaging apparatus such as a digital camera is shared by a large number of persons, there is as a main stream a method of updating image data to a common server and disclosing the image data to specific users, thereby sharing the image data.
There is also available a method of creating a network group between a plurality of terminals. For example, the two terminals are given as terminal 1 and terminal 2. Terminal 1 requests a data list satisfying a predetermined condition to terminal 2 in the network group. Terminal 2 generates a data list matching the predetermined condition received by the terminal 2 and transmits the data list to first terminal 1. Terminal 1 generates and reproduces a reproduction list from data owned by the self-terminal and the data list owned by the other terminal. Terminal 1 can handle as self-data the data without discriminating its own data from the data owned by the other terminal (for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-013704).
There is further available a method of creating a network group between imaging apparatuses such as a plurality of digital cameras. For example, two imaging apparatuses are defined as imaging apparatus 1 and imaging apparatus 2. Imaging apparatus 1 transmits as a key object conditions such as features of desired image data to imaging apparatus 2 in the group. Imaging apparatus 2 which has received the key object transmits image data matching the conditions among the images owned by imaging apparatus 2 as a list. The imaging apparatus 1 selects desired image data from the list. Imaging apparatus 1 can acquire the desired image data upon reception of the image data from imaging apparatus 2. The above processing allows imaging apparatus 1 to collect the desired image data from the other imaging apparatus (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-174026).
However, when a network group is generated to share image data, the number of shared image data increases in accordance with the number of shared devices and sharing time. It is difficult to acquire desired image data from a large number of image data. To solve this problem, there is available a method of searching metadata of texts assigned to the shared image data to find the desired data.
However, when the metadata is given as a text, different metadata are assigned to the same image data depending on users. In collecting image data in accordance with the metadata, search omissions may occur. This makes it difficult to collect image data matching all desired conditions.
Assume that desired image data is collected from image data disclosed by a server or the like. In this case, when the desired image data is not disclosed on the server, it is impossible to determine whether this image data exists.
The present invention provides a technique for improving collection efficiency of image data in consideration of the above problem.